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Did You Vote? Now Your Friends May Know (nytimes.com)
A look at VoteWithMe and OutVote, two new political apps that are trying to use peer pressure to get people to vote. From a story: The apps are to elections what Zillow is to real estate -- services that pull public information from government records, repackage it for consumer viewing and make it available at the touch of a smartphone button. But instead of giving you a peek at house prices, VoteWithMe and OutVote let you snoop on which of your friends voted in past elections and their party affiliations -- and then prod them to go to the polls by sending them scripted messages like "You gonna vote?" "I don't want this to come off like we're shaming our friends into voting," said Naseem Makiya, the chief executive of OutVote, a start-up in Boston. But, he said, "I think a lot of people might vote just because they're frankly worried that their friends will find out if they didn't."
Whom Americans vote for is private. But other information in their state voter files is public information; depending on the state, it can include details like their name, address, phone number and party affiliation and when they voted. The apps try to match the people in a smartphone's contacts to their voter files, then display some of those details. The data's increasing availability may surprise people receiving messages nudging them to vote -- or even trouble them, by exposing personal politics they might have preferred to keep to themselves. Political campaigns have for years purchased voter files from states or bought national voter databases from data brokers, but the information has otherwise had little public exposure outside of campaign use. Now any app user can easily harness such data to make inferences about, and try to influence, their contacts' voting behavior.
Whom Americans vote for is private. But other information in their state voter files is public information; depending on the state, it can include details like their name, address, phone number and party affiliation and when they voted. The apps try to match the people in a smartphone's contacts to their voter files, then display some of those details. The data's increasing availability may surprise people receiving messages nudging them to vote -- or even trouble them, by exposing personal politics they might have preferred to keep to themselves. Political campaigns have for years purchased voter files from states or bought national voter databases from data brokers, but the information has otherwise had little public exposure outside of campaign use. Now any app user can easily harness such data to make inferences about, and try to influence, their contacts' voting behavior.
"I think a lot of people might vote just because they're frankly worried that their friends will find out if they didn't."
If that's your only reason for voting, then you might as well just stay home. People voting on heuristics or based on what pop singer posted is what got this country into it's current mess. If you aren't willing to make the time and effort to research candidate positions (or even who the candidates are) then you are doing more harm to good when you vote. Democracy and effective government can only exist with an informed electorate. Put pressure on our politicians to campaign on actual, thought out policies and then hold them to those policies if they are elected. Do your research yourself, go to each campaign's website, watch debates and speeches, etc-don't just listen to talking heads or what your preferred candidate says about their opponent. Voting is a right just as owning a gun is a right. Uninformed voting is the electoral equivalent of waving a gun around in the air-when exercising a right, you have a duty to exercise that right responsibly.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
. . . they're probably not the kind of person that should be voting anyway.
1) At least in my state, just the fact you have a drivers license means you can get jury duty
2) Why are people so against jury duty? Yes, it's inconvenient but so what? We need more intelligent people willing to participate.
#DeleteChrome
>> You gonna vote? If you express yourself with words like "gonna", please don't vote.
If you think the target audience is concerned about slang, might I remind you that we now have a full compliment of emojis built into our desktop operating systems.
The per diem is a joke, but the actual pay is knowing you have access to a jury of your peers should the need arise.
Depends on where you live. Here, there's no point in voting because the Democrat will win, every single time, by more than +30%.
It's thinking like that which gave us Brexit.
this is exactly the type of shit that trump's sheep would do. and it's exactly what some republican election officials have done... publish the wrong fucking date in strong-democrat districts. so fuck off, hoser.
Which is exactly what trial lawyers and DA's don't want.
Please back candidates that support ranked choice voting. It's the only easy to get out of the closed loop we are in.
Oh come on....
If anyone is really stupid enough to fall for that and not know it is a joke, then I'm wondering if they are even smart enough to go vote without hurting themselves along the way to the polling place.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........